To come clean up front, I've always been a sucker for the stuff. From Gram Parsons and the Eagles to CSN&Y and the…
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Too clean. Too perfect. Too soulless. Those are a few of the most common phrases I've heard over the years from the enemies and detractors of the Southern California country rock scene of the 1970s. It's hard to believe that such laid-back music engenders such vehemence but even the Eagles' Hotel California, an audiophile favorite you were once sure to hear ad nausem at any Hi-Fi show, can split listeners in two: while they like the recording quality, they hate the music.
Saturday, February 10, 10am–3pm, Northern Audio (3003 Babcock Boulevard, Pittsburgh, PA 15237) welcomes Mike Marko of Nordost Corporation and Bob Scranton of Cambridge Audio for their "2018 Audio Innovations" seminar. Mr. Marko will provide the latest product demonstrations and cable comparisons, while Mr. Scranton will present how the right gear makes music lovers' lives better.
According to Northern Audio, the workshop and their insight "will show how affordably priced, quality products can offer the most meaningful enjoyment of your music." Refreshments will be provided and prizes will…
Tom Jung of DMP (Digital Music Products) is known as one of digital's early adopters. He's also an outspoken proponent of Sony's Super Audio CD over DVD-Audio. As I was intending to review Sony's first SACD player, the SCD-1, I invited Tom to Kathleen's and my Manhattan loft to investigate further. Tom and son Paul, who's responsible for DMP's sales and marketing, arrived with a passel of big drives, a DSD computer controller, and electronics designed by Ed Meitner (footnote 1).
In brief, the Direct Stream Digital encoding system used in Super Audio CD uses a 1-bit, delta-sigma–modulated…
Scull: Now that you're using DSD for your recording, I assume you have to downconvert that master in order to produce a CD?
Jung: Right. We used Sony SBM Direct on a couple of projects, and on the last one I came up with my own way of doing it. There's a 24-bit PCM output in DSD systems, so you can bring that 24-bit signal into any of the current PCM studio tools.
As projects get more complicated—more musicians, more instruments, more microphones—you have to do a little tweaking here and there. You've got to try to make somewhat of a commercial recording, even in terms of…
Sidebar: DMP Discography
All titles listed are CD-Format Recordings. Selected recordings will be available on Super Audio CD.
Jay Anderson
Local Color, CD-507
Next Exit, CD-490
The Lynne Arriale Trio
The Eyes Have It, CD-502
When You Listen, CD-511
With Words Unspoken, CD-518
One of my favorites—J-10)
Billy Barber
Lighthouse, CD-455
Shades of Gray, CD-445
Joe Beck & Ali Ryerson
Alto, CD-521**
Back to Beck, CD-464
Friends, CD-446
The Journey, CD-481
Relaxin', CD-444
Shelly Berg
The Joy, CD-3002
In my October 2017 column I reported on two turntables, the Palmer 2.5 and AMG Giro G9, each costing $10,000 and up, depending on ancillaries. It wasn't that I wanted to get all Mikey Fremer Uptown on you; I wanted to refine my listening skills and familiarize my senses with what my own humble system would sound like with a pair of world-class record players.
Armed with those experiences, I continued my research—with MoFi Electronics' new UltraDeck turntable ($1799 with MoFi Ultra tonearm, footnote 1) and their top-of-the-line moving-magnet cartridge, the MasterTracker. Separately, the…
The biggest difference between top-shelf and more affordable phono stages is that the best speak with a quiet, measured specificity that makes even budget cartridges sound good, reproducing recorded energy as well as sound. The best deliver deep transparencies and consistent focus. The best keep the listener's attention on the music. Lower-priced gear can sound slow, blurred, hazy, or opaque.
Therefore, I wasn't surprised when Parasound's Halo JC 3+ ($3000) sounded more transparent and more emphatically detailed, and provided greater depth of space than the LCR Mk.III. I was surprised…
Forgive us for the French but our March issue is about to hit newsstands, tablets, and mailboxes. With Naim's Uniti Nova amplifier and media player on its cover and reviewed inside by Ken Micallef, this issue will provide hours of reading pleasure. It has reviews of speakers ranging from the affordable to the high-priced, from KEF, Monitor Audio, Sonus Faber, Stenheim, and TAD. John Atkinson reviews closed-back headphones from MrSpeakers; Art Dudley reviews Ayre's KX-5 Twenty preamplifier; Michael Fremer auditions moving-coil cartridges from Kuzma and Koetsu; and Jim Austin offers further…
Back in the early summer of 2017, Jack Oclee-Brown, KEF's Head of Acoustics, visited John Atkinson to set up the KEF Reference 5 loudspeakers in his listening room. JA's review of the Ref 5 was published in October 2017, and during Jack's visit JA talked to him about the design of that speaker. But they also discussed KEF's affordable "Q" line of speakers and the challenges a manufacturer faces in bringing an inexpensive loudspeaker to market, the subject of this interview.
The context for the discussion was Herb Reichert's review of the KEF Q350 bookshelf speaker ($649.99/pair), which is…
Did you know that in May 1913, even before Diaghilev's ballet of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring caused fist-fights among Parisian concertgoers, Stravinsky and Debussy together played the newly printed four-hand reduction of the score? You can feel a hefty helping of the excitement created by the crashing keyboards of two geniuses in the percussive thrill that Marc-André Hamelin and Leif Ove Andsnes bring to the score on this new Hyperion recording of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, Concerto for Two Pianos, and three other short works for two piano and four hands.
I've always stayed away…